Conflict management: is gathering information enough?
When a disagreement stalls, managers often ask for more facts, detail and justification. The useful question is narrower: how can they prevent this information gathering from merely reinforcing the initial positions?
What the literature establishes
Leigh Thompson (1991, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology) experimentally examines information seeking and information provision in negotiation. Her findings show that exchanging relevant information can improve understanding of interests and the quality of agreements. They suggest a distinction between accumulating arguments and actually learning about the other party's priorities.
Receiving information does not mean revising a judgement
Carsten K. De Dreu, Sander L. Koole and Wolfgang Steinel (2000, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) examine the tendency to assume that negotiators' interests are strictly opposed. Their experiments show that motivation to process information carefully can reduce this perception and encourage integrative agreements. The relevant mechanism is therefore not simply access to information, but also the effort invested in working through its implications.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that requiring each party to explain everything is enough to unblock a conflict. These studies justify neither complete transparency nor the belief that clarification makes all interests compatible. New information may reveal an opportunity for a trade-off, but it may also confirm an incompatibility requiring an authoritative decision. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence cannot promise
These findings come from experimental negotiation settings and do not directly validate a workplace conflict management protocol. Confidentiality constraints, power relations and regulatory obligations can limit what may be shared or negotiated. A more detailed record does not, by itself, prove that participants have revised their understanding.
A practical check in Zurich
Within SHR's « Gestion du conflit » programme, an exercise suitable for financial services, insurance, tech and the European headquarters of international groups in Zurich would involve recording, before the discussion, one assumption about the other party's main constraint and what might prompt its revision. Afterwards, each participant would state whether the assumption was confirmed, changed or still unresolved, citing specific supporting information without recording confidential data. Over a predetermined observation period, the measure would be the proportion of documented discussions containing an assumption reassessed and supported in this way. This indicator would check a learning discipline, not conflict resolution or the training's causal effectiveness. To go further: explore the Conflict Management training in Zurich in the canton of Zurich, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Conflict Management in Zurich
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